Giving Compass' Take:

• Alan Ehrenhalt argues that increasing diversity in Atlanta's suburbs is shaping willingness to contribute to a regional transit, while Nashville remains staunchly opposed to funding transit. 

• How does neighborhood diversity play into willingness to engage with the larger community? How can funders encourage efficient development of transit? 

• Learn more about Nashville's failure to pass a transit plan. 

Looking at Nashville and Atlanta together suggests that the two cities are passing through different stages in their history.

For more than 50 years, the booming suburbs north of Atlanta have based much of their land use policy around one central idea: Stay away from anything Atlanta wants to do, especially when it comes to transportation. Cobb and Gwinnett counties, which together hold more than a million people, repeatedly refused to participate in MARTA, the metro Atlanta transit system. As a result, MARTA only covers the city itself and a few close-in suburban communities. Cobb and Gwinnett, meanwhile, had virtually no reliable public transportation well into the 21st century.

There’s a reason why that happened, although it’s not a particularly inspiring reason. Cobb and Gwinnett were middle-class refuges for white Atlantans who weren’t keen on living in integrated neighborhoods or sending their children to schools with diverse populations. In 1990, Cobb County was 86 percent white; Gwinnett was 89 percent white.

By the time the 2010 Census was taken, the white population in Cobb was below 60 percent. Gwinnett didn’t even have a white majority.

Atlanta and its biggest suburbs are not only starting to look alike; they are starting to think alike. Increasingly, the things that matter in Atlanta have started to matter in Cobb and Gwinnett as well.

Numbers back this up. In a 2017 poll, a majority of respondents in Cobb County said they viewed transit as the best long-term transportation solution. In another survey, 56 percent in Gwinnett and Fulton counties said they’d pay more in taxes for a better transportation system.

It’s possible that when Atlanta’s suburban voters actually have to vote on paying for transit, as they will in the next couple of years, they will be thinking differently. But the current climate of opinion in places like Cobb and Gwinnett suggests that metropolitan Atlanta is finally beginning to perceive itself as one region.

That’s something Nashville isn’t ready to do. Residents of the affluent outlying communities there are voting more like the Atlanta suburbanites of 1990 than those of 2018. But Atlanta’s metropolitan diversity reflects changes that are taking place in much of urbanized America. Most likely, Nashville will eventually see them too. Just not for a while.

Read the full article about transit by Alan Ehrenhalt at Governing Magazine.